Le Rocher des Violettes, 2017 Update
A good knowledge of the wines of the Loire Valley has served me well in many restaurants. I flip past the pages listing over-priced and heavily marked-up wines from Bordeaux and Burgundy, and other famous wine regions. The key to drinking wisely in restaurants is seek out less familiar wines from less popular regions, and the Loire Valley often scores well in this regard.
My leaning towards this region certainly paid off a few years ago, at Murano, when I enjoyed greatly the 2010 Montlouis-sur-Loire Négrette from Xavier Weisskopf, of Le Rocher des Violettes. Having tasted with Xavier (pictured) a handful of times, usually looking at his wines in their youth, it was great to see that the potential I sensed in his wines was real, and that this particular vintage of Négrette was looking good with a couple of years of bottle age on it.
The Wines
On this occasion I met up with Xavier to take a whirlwind tasting tour of forthcoming releases, looking a selection of whites made under the Montlouis-sur-Loire appellation, and two reds for which Xavier uses the Touraine appellation. Those whites included the delightful 2014 Pétillant Original, a wine which meets the standards of the Pétillant Originel charter, which goes beyond the usual Pétillant regulations to also define yields, ripeness level and time on the lees. It is a pretty smart glass of bulles, from what was a very favourable vintage.
